The Artist's Way
by Audreidi
Summary: A short story from the point of view of a Corellian civilian as her life twists into an unexpected story of its own with the appearance of a famous former general on the run.


**The Artist's Way**

* * *

It wasn't so long ago.

The night breeze drifted through the park, stirring the early summer leaves to rustle and my long loose hair to stir on either side of my face as I stared down at the blank flimsy in front of me.

I wasn't sure why it was still blank. Perhaps it reflected my state of mind, at the moment. My right hand was curled under the sheet of flimsy, one finger tapping expectantly. But my left hand, holding the inkstick in a death grip, didn't move.

The bench was hard beneath me, an old wooden thing that had likely been sitting here before I was born. The lacquer was worn down but the wood, probably grown with some sort of chemical, refused to rot.

I should know. I sat there every evening, watching the sun go down, waiting for inspiration to arrive over the Corellian horizon and set my left hand in motion, scribbling furiously under the streetlights as the daylight faded, writing something the local news would make a killing for the next morning.

No such luck tonight. There hadn't been for weeks. A few months, really. Little did I know that I didn't really need to think of a good story, though, because one was about to happen to me. It might not have ultimately determined the fate of the entire universe, or even anyone other than me, but it was my tale, my _personal_ narrative. My world. Nothing the media could ever really understand.

I must have looked really stupid, my lips parted, eyes staring through the void, posture sagging, but he picked me anyway; I was the only one there. Spaced as I was, I didn't see or hear him coming.

But when realization finally struck, he was already sitting on the bench, face flushed with exercise, his golden-brown hair disheveled, showing a few streaks of gray, ice-blue eyes shining with a dim spark of fear that I hadn't seen since I pulled a little kid out of a hole in the ice. The kid had been thrashing in the sub-zero water. I hadn't been much more than ten, but I had known the look in his wild eyes. It was rooted in human instinct. The look of someone that knew he was about to die, that could feel Fate's icy hands taking a grip over his heart. I could almost feel his terror myself, in a way.

Except that kid never did die, because I was there to pull him out by some freakish coincidence, as my mother put it. I could hear her now: _"You were there because you were there, Neymi. He was one lucky kid."_

Not that I believed it was mere coincidence. I didn't look at life that way.

And now I saw the same look in this man's eyes. Maybe I could do something here, too.

"What's the matter?" I managed lamely, fear gripping my throat. His beat-up robes weren't really that important to either of us at the moment, nor his miscellaneous unkemptness. I hardly noticed those beyond that gripping urgency. Not only was the look on his face making me afraid, I could feel the raw terror more than ever. Like it was coursing through my own system. He was controlling his fear, though, somehow, putting it in a mental container to deal with at a more appropriate time.

He darted a look over his shoulder. "Can you do something for me?"

"Yeah."

I could tell his mind was churning rapidly. "Pretend… pretend I'm your sweetheart."

I wondered _what_ he was thinking. Why he said that word as though it had only entered his vocabulary yesterday. And what was after him. "As in… my boyfriend… or something?" My thought process was muddled, as usual. _He would look a bit old for me, wouldn't he?_

"Yes. Please decide now. Or I might die."

Wow.

"Okay." I stood up, thoughts whirling through my head. "Come on. We'll walk under the shadows there." Because I thought it a very good guess that he was being looked for, the way he kept darting his eyes around.

He stood quickly, came to my side. I put my arm around his back, and we strolled off casually into the darkness under the trees.

"What's going on?" I said, just loud enough for him to hear.

"Hunted," he said. "Somewhere close I can hide?"

I thought rapidly as I heard a faint shout behind me. His pursuers, no doubt. "Keep walking. My place is right across the street."

He quickened his pace a little. My heart pounding rapidly, I matched it and directed us at my house, the little one second from the corner, with no lights in the vicinity. I had griped about that before, but if it was going to save someone's life now, there were no more complaints coming from me.

A speeder. There was a speeder coming around the avenue behind the park, behind us. He looked around and flinched ever so slightly. Control or not, he knew he was close to being captured. I wondered what had cracked through the emotional shield that he had in all probability worn down prior to these events.

"Don't worry," I murmured. "We'll make it. That's a dead end."

"Not for them."

"What?"

The sound of a speeder mowing over undergrowth.

"Damn it," I said, as if it mattered. "He's running over the flowerbeds."

We crossed the street, probably looking a bit hurried for a couple out for an evening stroll, but that wasn't exactly the foremost concern in my mind. Nor his, obviously.

I guided us around my cabin to the back door and fumbled with the security keypad.

His arm dropped from my waist as he listened intently. The speeder kept roaming the park, but there wasn't any sign that they were on to him.

The door hissed open and I ushered him inside. "Sorry about the mess, though I suppose you don't care. We'll go downstairs; there's something of a hidden room down there.

"So what happened?" I blurted, the thought of a possible homicidal maniac following me into my own basement running around my mind like a loosed vrelt. "Did you murder someone or something?"

The comment surprised him, a lot. "No. I would never do something like that. If you're going to play that game, _they're_ the criminals."

"Sorry," I said, relieved.

A segment of unfinished wall was actually a door. I wedged it open with an orphaned tool lying on the floor and waved into the space behind. "It's actually as big as a bedroom in there, and I clean it out, too. Maybe you can tell me what this is all about when they've left."

He nodded and ducked in. The floor of the hideaway was a couple of feet below the basement floor, the room itself directly under my front entrance. When I'd bought this ancient cabin and started to revamp the basement, I'd stumbled across the lone room that hadn't been included in the blueprints, and spiffed it up rather nicely. I might not have been able to write stories, but I was good at interior décor.

I headed back upstairs, wondering why I hadn't torn them out for a little airlift, as was the thing to do these days. _Am I really that lazy?_

…_There's a guy hidden in my basement that I don't even know, and someone's looking for him to try and kill him, and I'm thinking about home renovations._

Mentally kicking myself, I came up to the sitting room to look outside the window. I had never been so thankful for a good solid pane of transparisteel in my life, as there were some sort of idiot goons out there bent on murder.

I wondered why I couldn't so much as write down a story on flimsy when narratives were wildly running around in my head during my every waking hour.

_Agh. He's probably hungry. And the goons might get suspicious if they see me staring out the window at them._

I was paranoid. Who could blame me at the moment, either? I headed to the kitchen in an attempt to occupy myself.

But my heart was beating with excitement. Sure, I was scared out of my mind, and sure, I could maybe possibly not likely get killed, but I was hiding a total stranger in my basement from a bunch of goons set on murder.

I wondered what had prevented me from seeing that before. Or perhaps I was just seeing it in a whole new light.

Wow.

I decided to bring him the leftover roast traladon. It was still fairly fresh, as I had just made it a few hours ago. I heated it up, poured some gravy over it, and thought about cooking another pot of vegetables. My kitchen, like my house, was fairly old-fashioned, the way I liked it.

_Another pot of vegetables? I'm not being realistic. He'll likely be gone in a few minutes, and there goes my exciting brush with danger, which wasn't really that dangerous at all._

So I headed back down with the traladon and knocked on the hidden door. He took a moment trying to figure out how to open it, as my construction skills were as disorganized as everything else.

I stuck the traladon down in his reach. "It occurred to me that you were probably hungry."

His eyes widened; only now did I notice how gaunt he was. He looked as if he had been under a hibernation drug for months. "Thank you." He took the bowl readily and began eating, obviously trying to pace himself. Any faster and he would have been inhaling it.

I cocked my head. "Um, as to your other necessities, there's a refresher down here as well, just across the basement. If you want to take a shower, feel free…" I trailed off as he paused devouring the traladon to stare up at me.

His expression changed from blank to confused to a sort of muted sadness in less than two seconds. "You don't know who I am, do you?"

"What? Am I supposed to? Sorry, but I don't really make a point of following the news or anything." I shrugged. "Last thing I heard, the Empire took over and some guy by the name of what's-his-helmet Vader became the oh-so-Gracious Emperor's right-hand man. And that was two whole months ago. Hey, are you all right?"

He was silent as a solitary tear trickled down his left cheek to absorb into his short beard.

I was in over my head; that much I knew instantly. Everything sank in all at once. I hadn't been so lax in my holonews viewings that the face before me didn't _finally_ ring a bell. "You're General Kenobi, aren't you?"

He didn't say anything or nod, but the affirmative in his eyes was enough for me.

"Wow. A hero of the Clone Wars in my own sublevel. So. Were those people after you bounty hunters, or what?"

"Yes. They actually caught up with me, but I only managed to escape after…" He furrowed his brow. "I don't know what they did. But I think it was a drug of some sort. I can't sense anything beyond the reach of my arms, and only that very faintly."

"Like losing your vision, or something?" I wondered if I could ever cope with the loss of something so unimaginably powerful.

"It's already coming back; it's only temporary. I'll be on my way as soon as it wears off. I don't wish to put you in danger." He finished off the remains of the traladon.

"No, you should stay longer than that. You can shield yourself or something, right?"

He nodded once. "But I won't stay. You could be killed."

I shrugged again. Suddenly that didn't seem to be such a big deal anymore. "Aw, that's okay. As long as you get away, I don't think I'll mind."

The corners of his eyes pinched up in slight humor. "Really. You won't mind?"

I stared at him with a certain amount of melancholy. "I don't really have anything going for me, anyway. My contribution to the local Columnists' Guild is a few weeks overdue, I'm in permanent writer's block, and the only way I'm still getting income is through my inheritance from a ridiculously rich grandfather that I didn't even know I had. Oh, I'm just an incompetent babbling civilian, I suppose. Sorry about all that."

"Sometimes a person must let off a little steam, or they'll explode." He exhaled and leaned back against the wall. "Thank you for your hospitality. If it wasn't for you being there on the bench, I might not have made it."

I could feel my mouth quirk into a smile. _Strange, that I could produce something positive from such a mindless habit._ "I guess this gives me something to write about. An analogy, of course, portrayed as a sort of lesson-story, however I could make that," I added as a side thought. "Writing to the news about the galaxy's most hunted Jedi camping out in my basement wouldn't be the smartest thing for me to do in my lifetime. It would probably kill both of us, is my guess."

"You," he said, "could try for writing fiction."

"Fiction? _Me?_ You, beg pardon, have _not_ read any of my earlier pathetic attempts."

He studied me. Not my looks or anything, but his gaze seemed to pierce into my very character. I could see how this guy was a Jedi. "I think you could author a good story." A statement more than opinion. "Of course, career direction is likely a poor substitute for paying you back, but—"

I laughed. "I already told you about my rich dead grandfather. I need someone to spend credits on, anyway. Maybe I'll even buy a ship for you to get offplanet or something."

He stared at me incredulously. "_Now_ you're making fiction."

"No, I'm not. I've got money to spend. A lot. And besides that." I shook my head. "I can't narrate _or_ create a plot worth sh—"

He suddenly held up a finger, conveniently in mid-sentence. "Wait. Wait a minute." Kenobi stood up; I moved to let him step up into the basement. I noticed I was a good few inches taller than him. Sort of surprising, although I don't suppose military stature would have any impact on _physical_ stature. If that were the case, there would be a lot of oddly sized sentients out there.

He peered at me closely, in a way that I felt was stripping me to the bone.

"What?" I said, somewhat irritably. "What now?"

"It's you," he said. "You're broadcasting."

"Broadcasting? Broadcasting what?"

"Waves. Your sentiments, emotions. Even your general sentence structure." He shook his head. "Not good."

"What in the hells of Kessel are you talking about? You're making like I'm a communications tower or something. I'm not broadcasting a thing."

"Through the Force," he explained. "I couldn't feel it before because I was blocked off, but now, now I can feel it. You are Force-sensitive."

I was stunned, to put it mildly. Had I just figuratively won the lottery, or was I one of the randomly unlucky children who got stolen away by Lord Nyax? "Uh-uh. You're kidding me. Right? Or do Jedi joke around all the time?"

"Not about this matter." The look he carried now was one of dead seriousness. His gaze was figuratively projecting gravity waves into the air that weighed any flippancy I might have had down. "You are making yourself a target without realizing it."

"A target to whom?"

"The Empire. Or to be more specific, Darth Vader."

"Why would Vader be looking for me? Not for my writing skills." _Which seem to be lacking, anyway. Looks like Fate's cashed me in with Lord Nyax,_ I thought in a notably pessimistic manner. _Good thing that's just a myth. I've got enough going on here already._

He raised his eyebrows slightly, in all solemnity. "The dark side isn't interested so much in columnists as students."

"Students. Like anti-Jedi."

"Dark Jedi," he corrected. "I think I'm going to teach you how to guard yourself in return for your hospitality. Because in your case, that's a skill that no money can buy. In my case, likewise for hospitality."

I mulled it over. "You really want to even this deal out, don't you?"

"It's an ingrained habit." _Ridiculous,_ I thought. _These Jedi can be witty and serious all at the same time._

Or maybe it's just emotional cover for something else.

"Sure, then." I shrugged for the third time in about as many minutes. "It sounds good to me."

"We're going to have to be very careful about this," he warned. "And I won't be able to teach you here. Not without taking too great a risk."

"Where do you want to go?"

He hesitated for the barest moment, a flicker of his expression betraying him. I could see past the training (which would have prevented the waver in other circumstances) and already knew him well enough to see there was someone else involved in this, someone he naturally wanted to protect. But he told me anyway, and I knew he trusted me with this, at least. "Naboo. I need to get to Naboo as soon as possible."

I smiled. I'd been to Naboo once, which was enough for me to remember the place. "Sure thing. I'll just get provisions ready, and you'll be on your way. Naboo's gorgeous, isn't it?"

Kenobi wore the barest of smiles, a pang echoing through his eyes. "Yes. It is."

* * *

My little SoroSuub wasn't much to look at; it was a sort of middle-class yacht. My father had given it to me just after he had retired, and I still kept it in relatively good shape, for its age, anyway. But it would be enough to get me and the general to Naboo.

I wasn't sure why I kept thinking of him as the general. He was off his commission, after all; he'd been automatically resigned with the rest of the Old Republic. Not only was he commissionless, but they were looking to kill him.

And they'd be looking to kill me, too, if anyone found out I was giving assistance to a Jedi. It wasn't a position I had ever dreamed of being in. It wasn't exactly the ideal position, either, to put it as a mild understatement.

But for some reason I couldn't place, I still didn't mind. Even less than that; I didn't care. I was doing something now that might just have the potential to change the galaxy, and I was determined to carry it out.

So the next day I headed out to stock up on provisions, leaving Kenobi full range of my sublevel refresher. I suspect he took full advantage of it, because when I came back with my purchases he looked (and smelled) a lot cleaner. But it wasn't any mask to the grief that resided ever-present in his sharp but haunted gaze. I knew beyond any doubt that he'd had enough experiences to last ten lifetimes, and I couldn't say I envied him for that.

I left text messages to only my father (my mother was deceased) and the Author's Guild, vaguely stating I had abruptly decided to take a vacation (from what? I wasn't sure) and they were under no circumstances to contact me unless my father had died or the entire planet of Corellia had been razed by a maddened Imperial Moff, in which case there would be no one left to send me messages anyway.

Between the both of us, we managed to sneak him surreptitiously aboard my yacht, which my father had spontaneously titled _Heresy's Porter._ How strangely appropriate the name had just proven to be, as the _Porter_ was perhaps ironically licensed under Imperial standards.

General Kenobi was an excellent copilot, as I had suspected from his past credentials, and helped me more than my father ever had at exiting the atmosphere in the rickety old bucket.

Unfortunately, someone didn't want someone else to get any farther than that.

I saw the general's face pale as an Imperial Star Destroyer came into view, although to his credit his expression didn't flicker.

A static-ridden voice came over on my comm. "Personal transport _Heresy's Porter:_ you are not cleared to exit the system until you have been docked and your vessel searched. Stand by to receive boarders. Repeat: any attempts to leave before searching will have you marked and prosecuted."

As the transmission fizzled out, I exchanged looks with him. "We're in trouble, aren't we?"

He kept his eyes on me. "He knows about you. Possibly me, as well."

"Who?" I asked, fearing I already knew the answer.

"Darth Vader. He picked up on the signal, and sent a team to investigate."

"A team?" I waved my hand at the Star Destroyer. "You call this a _team?_ There's legions of men out there, just looking for _me?_"

"And me," he said, as if it was no surprise anymore that someone would dispatch hundreds of thousands of men just to kill one man, albeit a Jedi, and furrowed his brow. "There's no longer any way we can escape completely undetected."

"I hope you have an idea." I watched him close his eyes and sink into the chair. _This is no time for a nap._

But I could see then that he wasn't sleeping; far from it. His eyebrows barely pinched together and I saw the flicks of movement under his eyelids. He was concentrating, and giving it all he had.

It was barely a quarter of a minute before the droning voice came back over. "Personal transport _Heresy's Porter, _you are cleared to exit the system."

Now Kenobi relaxed.

"How did you do that?" I wondered, my fingers skimming over the navicomputer's controls. "Some kind of mind trick?"

"I convinced the commanding officer that this ship had already been searched," he said, somewhat wearily. "It took me a little while to find him, but Imperials, especially the lower ranks, generally obey their superiors unquestioningly, even if the decision is nonsensical."

"So. Exactly what did you make him think?"

"That the _Porter_ belonged to a small Corellian organization that hired itself out to transport Imperial officers. Ships that are a part of such organizations usually aren't searched, as it would be a mild breach of protocol."

"I'll say." I could imagine an Imperial officer puffing up with fury at the distrust that such a searching would imply. "How long do you think it'll take them to find out that the _Porter_ isn't in the organization's databanks?"

"Not long." He looked at me through half-closed eyes, and shook his head ever so slightly. "Not long. I hope you brought some credits with you."

I blinked. I had pulled out almost everything I had in the bank on a whim. "Yeah. Why?"

"Because in your situation, only a fool would return now."

* * *

So that was it. My old life was gone, thrown into vacuum by a few words of harsh reality. My identity was gone. Neymi Therine no longer existed. I wanted to go back, to tell my father it was all right, but I'm sure he would have preferred my disappearance rather than dark side training, given a choice.

Kenobi described to me how I could go about getting myself a false ID card. "And," he said, "I suggest you move to an Outer Rim world. The less Imperial presence, the better."

Obviously, I agreed with him, but I could worry about that when I came to it. Because now we were heading to Naboo, taking a roundabout way to shake off any possible tails. I set a course to Yag'dhul. From there we would take a different tack to Bothawui, and then finally hit Naboo at the end of a giant zigzag. Fortunately the trip was relatively uneventful, and gave the general a chance to catch up on some much-needed rest and relaxation.

So when Naboo came into our view from the cockpit, we were both awake enough for the sight to steal our breaths away. There was something captivating about the marbled sphere of blue and green, about the nature there that was complex and simply beautiful all at once.

Although the general's expression was mostly as neutral as a sabacc player's, I could see his eyes were aglow with all sorts of different emotions; eager anticipation, anxiety, hope, a deep sorrow…

But all that faded into simple pleasure when we came off the _Heresy's Porter_ into a small village he had directed me to. Landing in the capital city of Theed would have been far too dangerous, as there was already an inkling of Imperial presence there.

I wasn't sure if he had been in this remote location before or not; as he stepped out of the _Porter_ he walked with some of his usual assurance, but with some uncertainty as well, as if he didn't know what to expect, and that scared him. But he already seemed hesitant about everything, from what I had already learned, a trait that seemed unnatural for a man such as him.

I had told him that I didn't want to get in the way, but he said he would be glad of my presence. I knew he didn't really want to be alone for any period of time, and agreed.

It wasn't a long walk to the small reception area, but it took us a while to get there. The lush scenery captivated our attentions; the river swept by with calm grandeur, and the flora was as green as I might have remembered it, or even imagined. It wasn't anything like the blasé wanderings I had experienced in excessively manicured gardens on other worlds; here, everything was carefully pruned but no more, the caretakers wishing to preserve as much natural beauty as they possibly could.

There was something more behind the scenery, too. A distant flavor, that had shaped the culture for hundreds upon hundreds of years. An aroma that spoke of the piquancy of life, and the mellow smoothness of a wise maturity. But the bitterness of recent war was woven in, something that seemed totally out of place on such a planet, with such a people, though they had experienced it before.

I was so absorbed with my woolgathering I barely noticed that we had entered the little public foyer; the general had to tell me we had arrived before I snapped out of my dreamlike trance by his low-keyed voice. But the hint of a knowing smile on his face told me it had happened once to him, too.

My attention was quickly brought to the two people entering the foyer, a man and a woman. He was tall and dressed in a semi-formal outfit reminiscent of an officers' style commonly used in the Wars. His demeanor was similar to his dress; he carried himself with both authority and a watchful affability. Obviously, her bodyguard, or whatever the title would be here. She had chosen well, really, if he was as I thought.

She also held those traits in dress and personality, but there was something radically different about her. She hadn't just been trained to be personable, she had been _born_ personable. I held a certain amount of envy for that, I must admit.

Her long brown hair was tied back into an elegant but simple style, and her lengthy dress seemed to flow around her in a wave, though I didn't think the shimmering, almost ebony blue she was wearing would have suited her as much as a more light and colorful gown. Perhaps she wore this for a reason? The same reason that her beautiful face was cast in a quiet pain?

I saw her dark brown eyes instantly drawn to the general, who had already taken a step forward. He bowed respectfully, but as soon as he rose she caught him up in a strong embrace, her eyes closing behind a glistening pair of tears. He paused for only the barest moment before wrapping his own arms around her shoulders.

_Who died?_ I wondered silently, the expression drawing from an absolute lack of humorous banter, with which the words might have been used before.

But not now. The very mention, the very thought of humor seemed anathema to me as I felt the absolute grief of their meeting. They wept in a heavy silence, broken only by the gently rustling leaves in the cool breeze whose faint chill whispered of the coming winter.


End file.
